


Three Iron Bands

by Gileonnen



Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, The Frog King or Iron Heinrich
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Breathplay, Casual BDSM, Cologne Pride Parade, Fractured Fairytales, Germany, Gratuitous Genji References, Lapsed Catholics, Messing about in Boats, Multi, Polyamory, Reconfiguring Accidents, Umlauts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:17:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gileonnen/pseuds/Gileonnen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Faithful Heinrich had been so saddened by his master's transformation ... that he had had to place three iron bands around his heart to keep it from bursting in grief and sorrow."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Iron Bands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mithrigil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/gifts).



> Beta-read by three lovelies: [La Reine Noire](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/pseuds/La%20Reine%20Noire), [speakmefair](http://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/pseuds/speakmefair), and [Aquila](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Aquila/pseuds/Aquila).

Heinrich and Franz grow up in Heidelberg, a stone's throw from the Neckar River -- and that's just how they meet, Franz skipping stones over the shallows and Heinrich watching quietly from the gravel by the road. Franz (although Heinrich doesn't yet know his name is Franz) knows a trick to make the stones go skidding once-twice-thrice over the current-roughened water; Heinrich has never made a stone skip even once.

He should go up to the stranger and introduce himself, shake hands the way a grown-up would and ask like a very serious stone-skipper how to make the stone soar over the waves. For long minutes, as Franz selects river-smoothed stones and flings them into the Neckar, Heinrich stands with his eyes trained on the arc of the other boy's arm; his mother calls him shy, but Heinrich thinks that it isn't shyness that makes him hesitate to speak to strangers. Rather, he needs to plan out just how the conversation will go, as carefully as he would prepare a gambit at chess, before his plump fingers close at last on the knight and move the piece forward-and-aside.

What his mother calls shyness, a fear of other people, Heinrich thinks is more properly a fear of the unexpected -- but then, unexpectedly, the other boy sits at the river's edge and fixes his arms about his knees, with a faint sob that makes Heinrich's heart lurch.

He could slink away, he knows, and leave the stranger to his sorrows. But if he turned away, his feet would crunch on the gravel and the boy would know that he'd been seen. Perhaps he'd hate Heinrich for watching, for _spying_ , and for saying nothing; they'd see each other in the hallways at school or passing beneath the shadow of the Brückentor, and the other boy would see Heinrich's face and remember being small and powerless and alone.

If he has to remember something, Heinrich thinks, it should be that powerful arc of his arm as the stone spins out over the river and touches once-twice-thrice to the surface.

He crosses the patch of shifting gravel, not caring how loud his footsteps are, and then the thin strip of grass between the roadway and the river. "I'm Heinrich," he says, loudly enough to make the other boy look up with his eyes angry and his cheeks tear-stained. "I was wondering ... could you teach me to skip stones?"

Like a snake uncoiling, the boy climbs to his feet; even with his face puffy from crying and his eyes red at the edges, Heinrich thinks that the stone-thrower is very beautiful. (He has no other word for it but "beautiful," because that's the word he's learned for people he wants to kiss.) "My name is Franz," says the stranger. "Franz König. Like the cardinal."

"Are you Catholic?" asks Heinrich, and then he covers his mouth, because that's a stupid question -- of course Franz is Catholic, if he says he's _Franz König, like the cardinal_ \--

Franz is laughing at him, but it's not a hurtful laugh. It makes his eyes crinkle enough that they don't look red any longer, and Heinrich thinks that he wants to make Franz laugh like that again. "My parents are Catholic. I don't know what I am yet. You want to learn to skip stones?"

At first, Franz can't make the stones skip more than once. His hands are shaking still, although he puts on a brave face and speaks with expertise of the flatness of stones or the angle of the throw. As they work, though, Franz's voice grows steady, and Heinrich's arm grows sure on the swing and the release. When at last the stone flies from his fingers and strikes once on the surface of the river, Franz gives a whoop of victory and flings his arms about Heinrich's neck.

They pass the afternoon like this, with the shape of Heidelberg Castle rising to the sky before them and the rush of cars passing behind them, the river flowing smooth and steady alongside.

Heinrich forgets to plan eight moves ahead. He forgets to hold himself in reserve, or to look to see whether it's safe to laugh, or to wonder whether Franz will hate him later.

He forgets to ask why Franz was crying.

*

The first time Franz and Heinrich kiss, they've just won a rowing competition -- Franz, their coxswain, leaps forward from his seat and seizes the nearest person (who happens to be Heinrich) for a long, giddy kiss; Heinrich is still holding his sweep, which slides from his hands when Franz's fingers fix in the collar of his uniform. "Heidelberg!" shouts Franz, and he rises to the balls of his feet in a victorious crouch that threatens to upset their shell and embarrass the five of them.

The second time they kiss, they're lying on the floor of Franz's bedroom, reviewing parabolic equations together. Franz has given up on the mathematics, and he lies with his face pointed toward the ceiling, tossing a juggling ball in a smooth arc and then catching it again. He turns to Heinrich with some smart remark about parabolae on his lips -- but before he can make it, Heinrich leans over and kisses him. It's nothing like that sweet, ecstatic kiss in the shell; that was Franz's kiss, impulsive and quick and perfect. This kiss is Heinrich's kiss, and when Franz leans up into it, he parts his winter-chapped lips with slow-growing wonder at having been granted permission.

The thirty-third time they kiss, in the bright-eyed exhaustion of evening after their fourth-subject Abi interviews, they're walking home from school and trying to outdo each other with horror stories. "They asked me what Engels said about the fall of Prussia," Heinrich moans; "They conducted the entire interview in _American_ English," Franz counters, pressing a hand dramatically to his forehead. " _American_ English. It was like a foreign language!"

"It _is_ a foreign language," laughs Heinrich, but since he's too big to throw in the Neckar, Franz only bundles him against the base of the bridge and kisses him like vengeance. There's something unaccountable, something _electric_ in this kiss; Heinrich's back is pressed against the cold, rough stone, and although Franz is ten centimeters shorter and almost thirty kilograms lighter, he feels vast and strong and sure in Heinrich's arms.

Then Franz's teeth catch in Heinrich's lower lip, and he presses his thumb against Heinrich's windpipe; "Is this all right?" he asks, soft -- not shy, but cautious. As though they are moving swiftly along some unfamiliar current, and only Franz can see what's ahead.

"This is good," Heinrich answers. His voice is hushed, reverent; they might be standing in the center of a cathedral, afraid that even a whisper will resound from every wall and window. He can feel his pulse against the web of Franz's hand. He feels at once very lost, and very much alive.

*

They plan to attend university in Köln, a city where cathedrals stand shoulder to shoulder with the glass-and-steel Hauptbahnhof. Heidelberg has always been a city from a fairy tale, its red roofs rising through the trees and over the hillsides to the feet of the castle; Köln, by contrast, makes them feel pleasantly grown-up. (Heinrich has never really stopped wanting to appear grown-up, although he can cook a meal and have sex and do his own laundry and be conscripted. He wonders, sometimes, whether being grown-up is only ever something one _appears_ , and not something one _is_.)

Heinrich insists that he wants to attend the University of Köln because there's a good international program there; Franz is more candid about wanting to live in Germany's gay mecca. "I'll get up on a float and put my boyfriend on a leash if I damn well please, and I'd like to have people _cheer_ for me instead of arrest me," he says -- and at their first Köln Pride, the July after they move to the city, that's just what they do.

At first, Heinrich is half-petrified at the prospect. He's never been a spectacle before; that's always been Franz, handsome Franz with his infectious grin and his green eyes crinkled up in laughter. When Franz is telling a story, his hands making elegant arcs in the air, there's an incandescence to him that draws the eye -- and Heinrich is content to stand back-and-aside from him, letting him direct and delight and entrance.

"If this isn't all right," says Franz, "Then we don't have to do it. We can just walk the route, or even watch; we don't have to do anything unless you're comfortable." They are lying together in the darkness, the night before the parade, Franz's back tucked against Heinrich's chest and their hands closed tightly over one another. They breathe in a rhythm, Heinrich's exhalations stirring the soft, blond hair beside Franz's ear; every so often, the tickle of it makes Franz let go to scratch his ear and reposition himself, but every time his hand finds Heinrich's again.

This is what decides Heinrich at last. He can imagine nothing more comfortable than showing the world that he belongs to Franz, whether he wears a collar or a wedding band -- and if that's making a spectacle of himself, then perhaps he can be proud of it. "No, it will be good," he says, and kisses Franz's ear right at the itchy spot.

In the end, hardly anyone looks at them twice. There are women in latex zentai suits, men in hoop skirts and feathered hats the size of small cars; there are naked people painted in rainbow stripes and bare-chested leathermen, and even a bewildering contingent of gay white supremacists getting heckled by Turkish drag queens. A teenage boy in a collar is nothing to write home about.

When they get back to their flat, both of them sweat-sheened and practically gibbering with excitement, Heinrich presses Franz against the door and covers him with kisses -- Franz is laughing at him and telling him to _wait_ , to get _off_ , to let him put his bag down, but none of that registers until Franz tugs on the chain clipped to Heinrich's collar.

"Wait," he says, and Heinrich's hands still. His lips pause, inches from Franz's cheek.

"You make me so impulsive," he whispers, and Franz smiles to hear it.

"I like you impulsive," he answers, sliding his bag from his shoulder and letting it fall to the floor. "I like it when you surprise me -- the way you surprised me the day we met. I needed someone right then, and ... there you were. Like a miracle." Franz has decided that he is an agnostic, but he still believes in miracles, and he still wears a saint's medallion that was his grandfather's. Three generations of devotees' hands have worn its features smooth.

He touches Heinrich's shoulder, urging him to his knees, and Heinrich goes gladly. He turns his gaze up to Franz, whose expression is fond, eyes still laughter-bright.

"I love you," says Heinrich softly. Although he's said it hundreds of times before, today the words _mean_ something different; his heart feels on the edge of breaking. "I've loved you since the first time you laughed at me, by the river."

"You know, I think I've loved you since the first time you made me laugh." Franz offers a crooked smile and tugs at Heinrich's hair, dispelling the solemnity of the moment. "Which means I loved you _first_."

"Oh, shut up and let me suck you off," laughs Heinrich -- but even with Franz's hand in his hair, his cock deep in Heinrich's throat, that warmth of being loved lights him from the inside.

*

On the day when Franz falls down a well, Heinrich is sitting in his Modern Japanese History class, debating the influence of Matsuo Bashō on nostalgic Taishō art -- he has, he thinks, just made an excellent case about the aesthetic of rural simplicity in enka, when his cell phone rings.

"Sorry, Professor," he says, and puts the phone on silent. It's an unfamiliar number, anyway; probably nothing important.

"See that it doesn't happen again, Eisenberg," she says, and they continue the discussion.

When the class dismisses, Heinrich discovers three voice messages, all from the same unknown number.

He only has to listen to the first before he's running for the station, trying frantically to remember which train will take him to the hospital.

*

Franz's face has been shattered.

Heinrich tries over and over to think of it another way -- to see the crooked, bloody mess of his nose and his high, fine cheekbones without thinking that Franz is _broken_ , that he's been ruined forever -- but in those first thirty-six hours, that's the only word that he can find.

 _Broken_. Like a china cup on a hardwood floor, an egg on the side of a bowl.

Like a boy falling down a well.

The doctors are hopeful that Franz will regain full use of his right leg within a few months, less optimistic about the left. He listens thoughtfully as they explain this, just barely nodding his head; when they finish, he tries to smile and speak, but the broken bones and the painkillers make him unintelligible. "At least you have your arms; you'd be so angry if you couldn't row again," says Heinrich, but no one laughs. Heinrich has never been very good at telling jokes, and Franz can't manage laughter.

Mr. and Mrs. König arrive on the second day, nodding gravely and asking about physical therapy, cosmetic surgery, brands of wheelchairs. "Tell us when he can come home," says Mrs. König, and Heinrich knows that _home_ will only ever mean Heidelberg, to her.

Franz and Heinrich have been living in Köln for three years together, and they have a car and an electricity bill and an overweight cat together, but apparently that's not enough to make a home.

The whole damn thing already feels half like a dream -- like haikus about jumping frogs and far-away villages in enka songs.

*

"Hey," croaks Franz, with a weak smile. (He lost three teeth in his fall, broke two others. Lately, he only smiles with his lips.)

"Hey," Heinrich answers, pressing his hand. "The doctors say you're going home." He pauses. "Home to Heidelberg."

Franz might be trying to make a face. It's hard to tell, these days. "I've been thinking about that," he says, eventually. His voice is still rough, the enunciation imperfect as he relearns the shape of his mouth. "I mean, I've been thinking about us."

"About us?"

"About me, really -- but you're a part of my life. And this is going to make me sound like an ass ..." Franz strokes the back of Heinrich's hand, letting himself breathe for a moment. His fingertips press weakly against Heinrich's knuckles. "I'm afraid I'm not going to be the same person, after this. And I'm afraid that once the painkillers wear off, and I'm not always high on morphine" he doesn't know what his painkillers are; they might as well be morphine to him "I'm afraid I'm ... not going to like the person I am."

"And you're afraid I won't, either," says Heinrich, slowly. He wants to place every word carefully, and so he practices them in his head before he says them, rehearsing statements and responses. _So you're breaking up with me._

 _No, I need you now more than ever._

 _No, I just need time to ease back into things._

 _No, I just think we should take a break._

"Yes," answers Franz, and Heinrich is so lost in his rehearsals that it feels like a slap. "Yes, I'm afraid you won't like me at all. When I'm close to the surface, I just ... I want to go back under, Heinrich. I want to shut everything down, switch everything off ... and I'm afraid of that."

"I'm here," says Heinrich, but it's quiet and helpless. _Could you teach me to skip stones?_ he might have asked, if there had been a river beside them; here, there's only the hospital bed, and Heinrich feels like he has nothing to offer.

"I know you're here," Franz tells him. "And I'll be grateful for that, when I'm myself again ... but right now, I don't want you to be here."

"I understand," says Heinrich. When Franz leans up for a kiss, Heinrich leans down to press his lips over the stitches -- just lightly, in case the slightest pressure hurts too much to bear. Franz raises his hand to touch Heinrich's collar, and begins to undo it one-handed; as the leather loosens, though, Heinrich draws back and gathers the buckle closed again.

He doesn't understand anything at all.

*

When he goes back to Heidelberg that summer, Heinrich feels almost like a tourist. He takes the S-Bahn, chasing the line of the Rhine and the Neckar with his cat napping in a carrier beside him; she doesn't stir as they pass into the valley that Heidelberg Castle commands. He looks up to those crumbling walls and thinks of ghost stories that he used to tell with Franz when they were children. If he thinks back, he can almost remember Franz's expression as he describes the ghostly monk that descends from the castle, dripping a trail of blood all along the bridge --

But that makes him think about Franz, and that makes him feel ill, so he turns away from the window.

The cat only stirs herself as he is lifting her from the floor of the train to carry her to his mother's car. "How was your trip, Henning?" she asks, as he shuts his suitcase in the boot and buckles himself into the passenger-side seat. The cat stretches and slips her paw out between the bars of the carrier cage, batting at dust motes that shimmer and dance in the sunlight.

Like being a tourist; soon enough they'll both be going home again.

They're nearly back to the Eisenberg house before Heinrich realizes that he hasn't answered his mother. "How's Franz doing?" he asks, instead, and sees her lips draw thin as she watches the road. She wore the same expression when she had to tell him that his grandmother had died, six years ago; he knows that it means that she's deciding how to be gentle.

She's deciding whether or not she _can_ be gentle.

"He's all right," she answers, after a pause too long to be comfortable. "Getting around very well in his chair; he likes to follow the trail where you used to ride your bikes. I pass him, sometimes, on my way home from work. He always waves."

 _The trail by the river_ , Heinrich thinks. It's the season for rowing, on the water, but Franz has always hated sculling alone. He can imagine Franz, watching the boats going by, feeling lonely and hollow -- ready to switch everything off.

They call each other, sometimes, Heinrich curled up on the bed with the phone against his ear and the cat a black lump on Franz's pillow. They're never long conversations, and frequently punctuated by silences; Heinrich wonders whether it does Franz any good, listening to the sound of his breathing.

"He looks better," says Heinrich's mother. "More purposeful than he did before. I really think he's better -- and what about you?"

Heinrich could lie, but he and his mother would both know that he was lying, and that would hurt even more. "I'm worse," he admits. "It's lonely, without him."

"Then go after him," says his mother simply. "Pull yourself together, and go after him."

The car slows to a stop. Outside, the house looks the same as it did last summer; the garden is thick with flowers, phlox and pinks carpeting the ground as fine spears of lavender wave over the blooms. Just inside the fence, an old elm reaches skyward, with a swing suspended from a sturdy bough. Although Heinrich has become a stranger to Heidelberg, he can feel something like recognition in the air -- as though he, too, is being remembered.

 _Pull yourself together,_ his mother had said. As though it were as simple as that, to gather himself up and become a whole person again.

He touches the collar that he still wears about his neck, and he smiles without showing his teeth. "I'll do that."

*

Before Heinrich meets Franz, though, he meets Johanne.

She is a stick-thin woman with hooded eyes that remind him of a snake; her hair is as dark as his own, but it hangs about her face like a lank curtain. She has a snub nose and freckles so thick that he can't tell where one begins and another ends, and she likes to sit by the river during her midday break and read thick books like bricks. _Crime and Punishment_ , _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ \-- dark books, Heinrich thinks. Books to get lost in. When he comes upon her on the first day, she has _The Man in the Iron Mask_ open on her lap, and she flicks through the pages so quickly that he can't quite believe she's reading it. (Later, he will learn that she has read it six and a half times.)

She is sitting in the place where Heinrich and Franz used to skip stones together, on the rock where Franz sat when he burst into tears. Heinrich hesitates, unsure of whether he should move on -- this stretch of the river seems to have become _her_ place, and it hasn't been his for years.

When he stoops to pick up a smooth grey stone, though, she stays curtained behind her hair, and she doesn't stir when he sends it skimming over the water. The surface is choppy, the water high with the recent rain, but still he manages to skip the stone once-twice-thrice before it sinks.

"Oh, for God's _sake_ , König!" shouts the woman, and Heinrich feels an electric chill at the sound of the name.

"I'm sorry," he begins. He doesn't know where the sentence ends, though; _I'm sorry for disturbing your reading_ , he might say, or _I'm sorry you sound so unhappy_ , or _I'm sorry for not being Franz_.

She looks up, then, hooded eyes fixing on Heinrich's in something like horror. "Oh. _Oh_. I thought you were someone else. _I'm_ sorry. I thought you were --"

"Franz König," Heinrich answers wearily. "So you know him?"

"In a manner of speaking," she replies. "He just 'happens' to come by every day, prodding and prying and trying make me _fond_ of him." Her fine, low voice takes on a mocking inflection. "'Johanne, fancy seeing you here, in the same place you read every day! And after I'd just _happened_ to pick this bunch of flowers, fancy _that_ \--!"

"Stop," Heinrich says. He's never heard himself speak so sharply before, and it frightens him. He is suddenly, irrationally afraid that he will break her to bits. "Stop _now_."

She cocks her head to one side, frowning. "You know him," she says, and it's not a question. When Heinrich doesn't answer, she ventures, "You came here to see him." She is wary, now, like a deer that has scented a wolf in the wood.

"I did," he answers. "My name's Heinrich Eisenberg." From the expression that crosses her face, she's heard the name before, and it confirms something that she doesn't deign to share. "What's your name?"

"Johanne Fürst," she answers. "So you're the boy he left behind in Köln. The old flame."

"And you're ... what?" he asks.

"I'm an accountant," she replies, smirking. "But if you're asking what I am to _him_ \-- I guess I'm his fairy-tale princess."

*

Heinrich does _try_ to dislike Johanne. She makes fun of all of the things that Heinrich finds best about Franz, his earnest desire to please her and his grandiose stories and the way he lights up in her presence. She's the sort of woman who is easy to dislike, sharp-tongued and impatient and inelegant.

But she never makes fun of Franz's face, although it's healed into an unbeautiful shape, and for that Heinrich has to respect her.

Her jokes are often genuinely funny, and for that he has to like her.

"I met her by the river," says Franz, when Heinrich asks. "In our place. She was crying and combing the bank for something, and I thought of you. I thought of what you'd do -- so I asked her what she'd lost, and whether I could help her find it."

He wears a retainer with false teeth to replace the missing ones, and it gives him a faint lisp when he speaks. Heinrich thinks it's sort of cute, but he can see that Franz is self-conscious about it. (At first, he had thought that Franz turned away from kisses because he didn't want Heinrich to kiss him any longer; now, he knows that Franz worries that his tongue will find the gaps in that smile.)

Franz is more anxious than Heinrich remembers. He used to stumble over sentences because he was in a rush to get them out, but now his voice is always edged with a perilous laughter. As he tells the story of how he met Johanne, that half-mad mirth colors his voice.

"She'd lost her notes -- something about stock in gold, I think? -- and she knew she'd catch hell for it. She was new at her job, wanted to prove herself ... so I said I'd help her. What else could I do? I couldn't really come onto the grass in my chair, but I must've combed every meter of the bike trail, until _finally_ I found her notes beneath a thornbush. She tried to give me twenty euros for them, but I told her" he looks briefly wistful "I could really used a friend."

"And then you started bringing her flowers," said Heinrich, with a wry smile. He knows as well as Franz does that being newly in love feels like nothing so much as coming alive again. Franz returns the smile, equally wry, equally fond.

"Then I started bringing her flowers," he agrees. "And sometimes a new book, and sometimes just stories. She didn't like that at all -- sometimes, I'm sure she doesn't like _me_ at all -- but she'll give me this _smile_ when she thinks I'm not looking, and it lights her up. It lights _me_ up."

 _The way I used to light you up,_ Heinrich thinks, but he only reaches for Franz's hand. There's a dark patch of skin the size of a thumb at Franz's wrist, where the stone had scraped him raw. It's soft beneath Heinrich's fingers, and Franz doesn't mind if Heinrich strokes it absently when they sit together.

Whatever they are, now, they have over a decade of affectionate touches between them, and it still eases them to hold one another's hands. Sometimes, when it's been a low day, Heinrich will sit at Franz's feet, head in his lap, and let Franz sift through his hair until they're calm again.

At other times, after Johanne's finished with work, she'll stop by the Eisenberg house and see if Heinrich wants to go downtown with her. They'll browse bookstores together, looking for thick books like bricks; "Anything long enough to take my mind off of things," Johanne says, although she never says what things they are. Heinrich finds her a good German translation of _The Tale of Genji_ , and she buys it herself and finishes it over the weekend. When they meet on Monday for Thai curry, her eyes are shining, and she can speak of nothing else.

After that first meeting by the river, they only seldom speak of Franz. There are other stories to tell one another, stories that hurt only as much as they'd like, and those are the stories that sustain them.

She has decided, for reasons that she keeps to herself, that she could use a friend -- and that friend is Heinrich.

*

On a grim, overcast Sunday, while they are walking side by side along the half-deserted streets, Johanne finally breaks their silence. "I can't make out what you are," she says, one thumb hooked in the belt loop of her corduroy skirt. She is dressed all in browns and greens, with a jacket and wrist-cuffs although the day is warm; she gets cold easily, even in summer. _Cold hands, warm heart,_ she'll say cynically, as though she can't believe that her heart could ever be warm.

"What I am?" Heinrich asks. He can smell lightning on the air, mingling with the scent of gardenias.

"What you and Franz are," she says. "Clearly you're still crazy about each other, so why the prince charming routine? Why the flowers and the puppy-dog eyes?"

He's heard her call Franz a puppy-dog before, but then she was snide and sneering. Now, Johanne's freckled face is marble-smooth, her dark brows raised in query. Heinrich wishes he knew which answer she wanted to hear. "Maybe it's just what he said, the day you met. Maybe he could use a friend."

"I don't believe _that_ for a second," she says, snorting and casting her eyes away. "Let me buy you a coffee or something. If I'm going to interrogate you about your boyfriend, I should at least buy you a drink. It's the decent thing to do, right?"

 _The decent thing._ He searches her words for that familiar, self-mocking cynicism, but for once she sounds entirely sincere. It makes him smile, with just his lips. "Don't handcuff me, though. Franz might get jealous."

Her eyes flick to his collar, then away again. "He gave you that, then?" As though he could miss the angle of her gaze, she clarifies, "The collar." She raises her hand, as if she wants to touch it, but then lets it fall back to her hip.

"He did, because I wanted him to," answers Heinrich. He could try to explain, try to justify or excuse, but he's never had to explain it and he hasn't the words. "There's a coffee shop," he says instead, and points across the street to the familiar façade of Cafe Moro. "Lead on, Officer Fürst."

As they're crossing, though, the rain begins to fall in thick curtains. It's as though someone has turned on a spigot over them, drenching them both through before they can break for the shelter of the coffee shop; Heinrich covers his head and makes a run for it, but Johanne is flinging her arms and dancing over the tram tracks, spinning in despite of the strangers passing by on their bicycles and Vespas. She laughs like a jay, letting the rain soak her as she tilts her snub nose toward the sky.

Lightning crackles through the air, with thunder on its heels, but by then Johanne has crossed the street and fallen, laughing, against Heinrich's shoulder. Her hair is plastered to her cheeks, but her eyes are bright with the startlement of the shower.

The storm lasts only a few minutes, but Johanne is shining and vibrant all through the afternoon. _Long enough to take my mind off of things,_ Heinrich remembers her saying.

He thinks that he understands, now, what she means.

*

Heinrich isn't sure when he realizes that Johanne is in love with Franz. After he becomes her friend, but before Franz is finally cleared to leave his chair. After the summer thunderstorm, when Johanne dances in the street. Before Heinrich and Franz take a shell out on the water, for the first time since they left Heidelberg.

They row together, Heinrich on stroke side, Franz on bow side; although they aren't facing one another, the conversation flows easily between them. (Later, Heinrich will wonder if it flows so easily _because_ they aren't facing one another.) "At the end of summer, I'll come back to Köln," Franz is saying. There is a sing-song cadence to his words as he tries to keep the rhythm of their strokes.

"I'm glad," Heinrich answers. "Our cat's missing her space." He doesn't say, _she slept on your pillow while you were gone_.

Although Franz's legs are still weak, his arms are powerful. The little shell slides easily along the water, not quite fast enough for a doubles race but fast enough to send the water streaming to either side of them in clouds of pearly foam.

They are passing the place where they used to skip stones (and where Johanne still goes to read at her midday break) when it happens. Franz is directing Heinrich's attention to a boat on the far side of the river -- that's how Heinrich knows that he doesn't see it; because he's critiquing the others' rowing in that slightly-lisping storyteller's voice.

They glide past the bracken-shaded place at the bank, and Johanne looks up as Franz's voice carries across the waves. She looks up, and for the first time, Heinrich sees that world-lightening smile on her face. It makes his stomach twist.

 _Of course,_ he thinks, as though he has always known. _Of course she's in love with him._

*

"Are you _joking_?" Franz demands, sitting upright in bed with his soft, blond hair in disarray. The bedside lamp draws angular shadows over his face. "Tell me you're joking. The only other possibility is that you've gone _completely off your head._ "

Heinrich's veins feel as though they are running with icewater. He is aware, for a paralytic second, that he _could_ be joking. He has never been very good at telling jokes. "I'm not joking," he says firmly. He reaches over to take Franz's hand and pull it against his own chest. "I think she really does care about you."

"And that's why she calls me a puppy-dog in that -- that _voice_ of hers --" His own voice ratchets up nearly an octave, but whether it's from anxiety or in mockery, Heinrich can't say.

" _You_ put a collar on me," he says, as reasonably as he can manage. "You beat me and strangle me, when I ask you to."

A laugh bursts from Franz's lips; it's that mad laugh that's always lingering at the edges of everything he says, that laugh that Heinrich has imagined but never heard. "That's not the same thing. That's not the same fucking _thing_ , Heinrich --"

"No, it's not. But maybe it's the only way she knows to _show_ you that she loves you."

Franz forces himself lie down again with his head tucked against Heinrich's shoulder, but Heinrich can feel that he's trembling. The saint's medallion catches on his shirt like a spot of light, reflecting the glow from the lamp.

When Franz shakes like this, Heinrich is glad that he's big and solid and strong. He can close himself around Franz's body and shut the rest of the world out, letting warmth grow to fill the spaces between them as Franz's breathing evens out.

Heinrich feels Franz's thumb tracing the line of his jaw, catching on stubble from chin to ear. His index finger comes to rest on the collar at Heinrich's neck. "I don't want to lose you, to chase a woman who might not even like me," he says. His voice resonates against Heinrich's ribs. "When I got hurt, I took it for granted you'd wait for me while I pulled myself together -- and you did, but that says more about you than it does about me."

"I did wait," Heinrich answers. He closes his eyes, because no matter how many times he has traced chains of possibilities from this single point, he can see only one possible endgame. "But I like Johanne, and I love you. If you want to see what you can have with her, I won't stand in your way."

He reaches up to undo his collar, and Franz lets him. Somehow, Heinrich had known that Franz would let him; the knowing doesn't make it hurt less, though. The buckle comes undone easily, and although the leather has been fixed in place by wear and weather, a little tugging makes it slide free.

Then Franz whispers, "Now put it on me."

At first, Heinrich is sure that he's misheard. "Put it on you?" he repeats, the way he always repeats what he doesn't understand. "I'm not sure it works like that, Franz --"

"Why shouldn't it work like that? Why shouldn't I belong to you just as much as you belong to me?" His hand is cool where it rests against Heinrich's neck, and his glass-green gaze is steady. "Isn't that what this means? That we belong to each other?"

Heinrich can't answer. His throat feels tight, his tongue thick in his mouth. Franz draws the worn leather of the collar from his fingers, then, and fixes it about his own neck. His neck is slender, and he has to tighten the collar two eyelets past the sun-bleached line where the tongue of the buckle usually rests. "It's hard for you to think that I belong to you, too, isn't it," says Franz. He isn't lisping; his retainers rest on the bedside table.

"A little bit, yeah," Heinrich admits. "You broke up with me and went back to Heidelberg, and the next thing I know, a strange woman's telling me that you're in love with her." Franz opens his mouth to protest, but Heinrich knows how this conversation will go, and he shakes his head. "I'm just describing what it felt like. I know you didn't mean it to feel like that." Switched off. Shut out.

Franz listens with his head tilted slightly to one side, the way Johanne does when she's drawing conclusions and deciding whether to share them. "And nothing I do tonight is going to stop it from feeling like that," he says at last. "You gave me time, when I needed to pull myself together. Is that what you need now? Time?"

"I don't know what I need," says Heinrich. "I could say that I need you, but I don't know if it helps anything to need you."

"Does it need to help anything?" Very gently, one hand to Heinrich's shoulder, Franz presses him onto his back and seats himself over the bow of Heinrich's hips. They've done this hundreds of times before, but never with this delicacy -- never with Franz's eyes dark and intent, his free hand going up to touch the collar about his own neck. Never with the scars on Franz's face shimmering strangely in the lamplight.

 _Isn't that what this means? That we belong to each other?_

Heinrich reaches up to hook two fingers beneath the collar. The leather is still warm from his skin. "Come here, boy," he whispers, the way Franz has whispered to him more times than he can count. "Come let me kiss you."

"I was hoping you'd tell me to take my shirt off," says Franz, but he's smiling as he leans down and presses his mouth to Heinrich's. At first, it's the same closed-mouth kiss that they've shared so often this summer -- but then Heinrich's hand closes tightly on the leather band, and with a rough, broken sound, Franz opens to him, teeth scraping jagged over Heinrich's lower lip.

"Take your shirt off," he says, low and kiss-smothered; Franz sits up only long enough to drag his shirt over his head, and then he's latching onto Heinrich's neck and drawing blood up through the pores. In every line of him, every arch and curve of muscle, there is a growing hunger to please that feels like desperation; Heinrich digs his nails in, carving furrows over Franz's shoulderblades.

Heinrich's nails are dull, and it takes ages to draw blood -- by the time his fingers are slick-sticky, though, Franz is begging to be torn apart. "I'm yours," he whispers again and again against the bruise-dark skin of Heinrich's neck. His hips shift in time with the rhythm of Heinrich's hands at his back, driving the hot, hard line of his cock against Heinrich's as he whispers _Yours, yours_ like a Pater Noster.

"Mine," Heinrich breathes against his hair.

 _Isn't that what this means?_

 _No,_ Heinrich thinks. Maybe this does mean that Franz belongs to him, too; Franz believes it. But it also means that Franz needs to learn how to be shattered.

That much, he can give.

*

For the first time all summer, Johanne and Heinrich and Franz meet at the river. Heinrich sits aside and watches as Franz teaches Johanne to skip stones -- Franz's arm has improved, over the years, and when the dry days have bled the river smooth, he can make a stone skid six times over the surface before it falls. "Show-off," Johanne snorts.

There's nothing like fondness in her voice, but she lets Franz take her arm and guide her through the swing and the release. Her wrist inclines into his palm; her shoulder comes to rest against his shoulder; for a moment, the two of them might be one creature.

"So this is it," she says eventually, in the stillness after their stone has sunken to the riverbed. "I expect you to write me."

"I will," Franz begins -- "I was talking to Heinrich," says Johanne. The very tips of her fingers trail along the uneven line of Franz's cheekbone as she says it, though, and she leans in when he puts a hand to her hip. She closes her eyes.

They're learning how to read each other, Heinrich thinks, and the thought makes his heart twist in a way for which he can't yet account.

Tomorrow, Franz and Heinrich return to Köln, to their flat and their electricity bill and their old life. They've missed this year's Pride, but they spent the day curled up in the swing that hangs from the Eisenbergs' elm tree; neither one counts it a loss.

"I'll send you books," Heinrich says. "Or lists of books; I know you hate presents."

"I hate presents that are trying to _prove_ something," Johanne answers, and then laughs sharp and unexpected when Franz tickles her beneath the ribs. "I liked you better in the chair!" she shrieks. "Damn _grabby hands_ \--"

"He had grabby hands in the chair, too," volunteers Heinrich, and for that he gets tackled to the ground and kissed soundly, lips and jaw and neck; Franz is still self-conscious about his teeth, but when he's happy, he forgets to be. He fixes the last kiss to Heinrich's Adam's apple, just above the buckle on his collar.

Johanne makes a small, unreadable sound as Franz lets Heinrich go. It might be jealousy; it might be joy. It might be that jay-like laugh that she turned against the lightning.

It might be nothing at all.

*

They take the S-Bahn back to Köln, with their cat turning impatient circles in her carrier crate and batting at the legs of the attendant when she passes. "She reminds me of someone we know," Heinrich observes -- and it's not a very good joke, but it makes Franz laugh.

At the station, Johanne had given Franz an iron ring to wear. "This isn't a promise of anything," she said, but she'd worn a ring to match it, and she'd twisted it on her finger as they'd boarded.

Franz strokes the polished-smooth surface of his ring, the way Heinrich had stroked the buckle on his collar when he'd had to lie alone. They don't speak to one another, but there is some comfort in sitting close enough to hear the sound of Franz's breathing.

As they round a bend, the Neckar vanishes behind them.

*


End file.
